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You know last night I did a bit of research on the Catholic web site "New Advent.org" and was looking at enteries involving "Aramaic". To gain a little more info on both primacy and early church stuff. It's really, really interesting too! You know while there is a general overall assumption of Greek primacy, when they want to explain a Greek concept or term. Like the "primacy of Peter", term "apostle" etc. they infact go back to Aramaic. Not just for things in the Gosples, but things in the episltes as well. Infact I think that topic is so interesting that today or tomorrow, I will do a thread here in the general section. Where I will post little gems from that Catholic internet database.
I. THE NAME

The word "Apostle", from the Greek apostello "to send forth", "to dispatch", has etymologically a very general sense. Apostolos (Apostle) means one who is sent forth, dispatched--in other words, who is entrusted with a mission, rather, a foreign mission. It has, however, a stronger sense than the word messenger, and means as much as a delegate. In the classical writers the word is not frequent. In the Greek version of the Old Testament it occurs once, in III Kings, xiv, 6 (cf. ibid., xii, 24). In the New Testament, on the contrary. it occurs, according to Bruder's Concordance, about eighty times, and denotes often not all the disciples of the Lord, but some of them specially called. It is obvious that our Lord, who spoke an Aramaic dialect, gave to some of his disciples an Aramaic title, the Greek equivalent of which was "Apostle". It seems to us that there is no reasonable doubt about the Aramaic word being seliah, by which also the later Jews, and probably already the Jews before Christ, denoted "those who were despatched from the mother city by the rulers of the race on any foreign mission, especially such as were charged with collecting the tribute paid to the temple service" (Lightfoot, "Galatians", London, 1896, p. 93). The word apostle would be an exact rendering of the root of the word seliah,= apostello.
First Beatitude

The word poor seems to represent an Aramaic `??ny?? (Hebr. `an??), bent down, afflicted, miserable, poor; while meek is rather a synonym from the same root, `??nwan (Hebr. `??naw), bending oneself down, humble, meek, gentle. Some scholars would attach to the former word also the sense of humility; others think of "beggars before God" humbly acknowledging their need of Divine help. But the opposition of "rich" (Luke, vi, 24) points especially to the common and obvious meaning, which, however, ought not to be confined to economical need and distress, but may comprehend the whole of the painful condition of the poor: their low estate, their social dependence, their defenceless exposure to injustice from the rich and the mighty. Besides the Lord's blessing, the promise of the heavenly kingdom is not bestowed on the actual external condition of such poverty. The blessed ones are the poor "in spirit", who by their free will are ready to bear for God's sake this painful and humble condition, even though at present they be actually rich and happy; while on the other hand, the really poor man may fall short of this poverty "in spirit".
Shlama Addai,

Thank you for the reminder from the words of our Lord.
I think we all need to remember that God has chosen the poor in spirit- the humble and accepting souls , to whom He may reveal Himself and abide within . We who study His
word need the reminder that "Familiarity breeds contempt."
Familiarity even with holy things can make us careless, proud and smug.
We all need a fresh vision of "Him with Whom we have to do."

For look also at your calling, my Brethren; that not many among you are wise, according to the flesh; and not many among you are mighty, and not many among you are of high birth.
27 But God hath chosen the foolish ones of the world, to shame the wise; and he hath chosen the feeble ones of the world, to shame the mighty;
28 and he hath chosen those of humble birth in the world, and the despised, and them who are nothing, to bring to naught them who are something:
29 so that no flesh might, glory before him.
1 Cor. 1:26-29

Jas 2:5 Hear, my beloved brethren; hath not God chosen the poor of the world, but the rich in faith, to be heirs in the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him?

"Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls", said the highest.

Amen.

Dave
Shlama,

Having trouble finding a precise meaning to those archeic idioms and rare words? Learn classical Arabic <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->

Afred Guillaume informs us in his preface of the book The Legacy Of Islam:

"Since the beginning of the nineteenth century there has been a constant recourse to Arabic for the explanation of rare words and forms in Hebrew; for Arabic though more than a thousand years junior as a literary language, is the senior philosophically by countless centuries. Perplexing phenomenon in Hebrew can often be explained as solitary and archaic survivals of the form which are frequent and common in the cognate Arabic. Words and idioms whose precise sense had been lost in Jewish tradition, receive a ready and convincing explanation from the same source. Indeed no serious student of the Old Testament can afford to dispense with a first-hand knowledge in Arabic. The pages of any critical commentary on the Old Testament will illustrate the debt of the Biblical exegesis owes to Arabic.

All in all, Syriac and Hebrew has nothing over classical Arabic.
bar_khela Wrote:All in all, Syriac and Hebrew has nothing over classical Arabic.

Heheheh.

Akhi bar-Khela, while the Arabs who were descendant from Ishmael were eating lizards in the desert of Arabia....their Semitic ancestors of Mesopotamia and the Levant were building half of the world's civilization as we know it today. While these civilizations were creating complex literature, science and advanced mathematics including geometry and calculus.....lizard-eating Arabs were still counting on their fingers.....when their hands were free from picking lice off each other's backs.

Before Abraham~Ibrahim was even born (let alone Ishmael and Iskhaaq), the oldest Semitic language (oral and written) was Akkadian. We are talking about thousands of years before Abraham.

For all of the "Arabic" idioms in the Quran, see:

http://www.studytoanswer.net/islam/purearabic.html
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Books/Jeff.../intro.htm
Akhi bar-Khela,

As you well know, Abraham was from southern "Iraq." When told to leave southern "Iraq", he and his wife Sarai lived in Harran (in northern "Iraq", then called "Assyria"). They lived there a long, long time with their relatives. From there they went on to Canaan.

As you also know, Abraham had Ishmael and then Iskhaaq. When Iskhaaq was 40 years old, Abraham forbade him to marry from the women around them and sent him to his own "kin" so that he may marry "one of his own."

The book of Genesis tells us:

Moses Wrote:Isaac was 40 years old when he took as his wife Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram, and sister of Laban the Aramean.

The story doesn't end there, beloved Akha. Iskhaaq later had Yaqub, did he not? Well, did Iskhaaq also insist that his son, like he, marry from their own "kin?" Why, yes indeedee....he sure did. And sure enough, Yaqub married the daughters of Laban....the Aramean, who told him:

Genesis 29:15 Wrote:Laban said to him, "Just because you're my relative, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be."

Now, let's analyze these facts for a little bit. Iskhaaq married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean. She was the sister of Laban, the Aramean. They were from Paddan-Aram (Aramea.)

Iskhaaq's son Yaqub was also forbidden to marry of the "foreign" women, and also went to Aram to select a wife from among his "kin"....the Arameans.

So, all the men and women who are considered to be the Patriarchs of both the Hebrews and the Arabs were.....guess what? ARAMEANS!

If these were Abraham's "kin", Arameans who lived in Iraq (southern "Babylonia~UR" and northern "Assyria-Harran") that is, then are you really suggesting that the Arameans (and even Babylonians and Assyrians) spoke Arabic prior to the time Ishmael and the Arabs even existed?
Shlama,

Now this is gonna hurt a little, Akhi Paul.

"It was linguistic and stylistic evidence, however, that led G??nter L??ling and recently Christoph Luxenberg to the reconstruction of a pre-canonical text. Let us briefly look at the scenario. The Qur'an is traditionally held to reflect pure Arabic language, attesting its close relation to the cultural aud linguistic orbit of Arabia. But since the monotheist tradition that the Qur'an continues is based on scripture codified in Hebrew and Greek, and circulating predominantly in Syriac which was also the language of a host of liturgical texts, it is hard to believe that the Qur'an should be devoid of traces of that tradition either spiritually or linguistically. It is not surprising to find a large number of loan words, mostly Syriac, in the Qur'an, as was noted by the earliest Islamic philologists. The orthography that underlies the Qur'an, originally not more than a deficiently represented consonantal basic layer, the rasm, though going back to Nabatean precedents was strongly imprinted by Syriac models. It was only during the eighth and ninth century that Qur' anic orthography was fully developed to unequivocally represent the sound structure of the texts. The final orthography whose implementation was supervised by linguistic specialists served to unify the still inconsistent writing of the text and to preserve it in the shape demanded by the newly standardised grammar of classical Arabic which was derived from the structure underlying the language of ancient Arabic poetry. Thus, questions arise as to the earlier shape of the Qur'anic text veiled by the standardised normative orthography. Was the Qur'an from the beginning a text in the poetical koine, as the high language using i`rab is labelled, while the spoken language was different, there being a kind of diglossia similar to that currently observed? Or was the Qur'an originally held in the language of Mecca, the vernacular of the first listeners, and only subsequently 'normalised' to fit the rules of `arabiyya? What about the Syriac interferences? Were they more perspicuous than they appear in the textus receptus?

The question is important not least since it touches on the reliability of the oral transmission of the Qur'an. Tradition holds that oral transmission played a momentous role in preserving the integral shape of the Qur'an - was it eclipsed at a later stage by a predominantly written transmission? What significance does the written transmission have? Do certain obscure expressions in the Qur'an point to a deficient understanding of text units that was perhaps caused by a mistaken writing?

Questions like these have been tackled by Ignaz Goldziher, Theodor N??ldeke and Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergstr??sser, Arthur Jeffery and many others in the first half of the last century, usually without challenging Islamic tradition in principle, scholars rather trying to situate their findings within the traditional image. Others, however, like Karl Vollers who advocated a vernacular form for the Qur'an and charged the Arab grammarians with having transformed that linguistic shape into classical `arabiyya, did contradict Islamic tradition. Alphonse Mingana, moreover, who claimed a strongly Syriac imprinted form of the Qur'an text, constructed an agency of exterior influence by crediting the redactor with stylistic copy-editing of the Qur'an. This redactor, who is sometimes called 'author', would have integrated a host of foreign - Syriac - loan words into the Qur'anic language and thus brought about the linguistic revolution that the Qur'an - viewed within the ancient Arab context - reflects. Thus, the vision of the Qur'an's novelty, its non-identity with the poetical koine, veiled by the later standardised orthography, aroused questions long before the appearance of the contemporary revisionists.

But it was not before L??ling - and more recently Luxenberg - that a revisionist construction of early Islamic history was designed on a linguistic basis G??nter L??ling published his Der Ur-Qoran three years before the books of Wansbrough and Crone and Cook appeared. He considers about one third of the Qur'an - the shorter suras that reflect a particularly succinct and highly poetical style and thus are often perceived as difficult, even mysterious - to be the outcome of a rewriting of originally Christian hymns. Gerald Hawting has stressed the arbitrariness of this study: 'It seems to me that the argument is essentially circular and that since there is no way of controlling or checking the recomposed ur-Qur'an, there is a danger that it will be recomposed to suit one's own preconceptions about what one will find in it'.

L??ling' s claim of the pre-canonical Christian text that had fallen into total oblivion is, however, revived, though his work is nowhere explicitly acknowledged, by anew investigation with the pretentious title The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur 'an - A Contribution to the Deciphering of Qur'anic Language, by Christoph Luxenberg, which appeared in 2000. Luxenberg seeks to re-animate the debate about the Qur'anic language as either poetical `arabiyya or vernacular, advocating the vernacular option. The original Qur'anic language is, as he tries to prove on the basis of Qur'anic orthography, lexicon and syntax, an Arabic-Syriac linguistic blend. His aim is to trace not only overt but also 'hidden' syriacisms - be they Syriac spellings assumed to have been blurred through the later arabicisation of Qur'anic orthography or be they earlier Syriac understandings divergent from those suggested by the exegetes who - in his view - no longer understood the original language of the Qur' an and thus had to resort to the later developed Arabic etymology for their analysis. Luxenberg discusses some 75 cases, but these in his view are only 'symptoms' of a lingustic reality that covers much larger strata of the Qur'an. There is an entire Syriac code to the Qur'an, a Syriac reading, a syro-aram??ische Lesart.

In view of the popularity gained by Luxenberg's book it is perhaps worthwhile to present briefly his method starting from 'obscure' lexemes or expressions in the Qur'an, Luxenberg first (I) consults Tabari and Lisan al-`Arab, looking for explanations that might point to an underlying Aramaic reading or interpretation. If none is found he looks (2) for a root in Syriac, homonym to that in Arabic, but whose meaning 'fits better' into the context. If no result is achieved, Luxenberg tries (3) to sound out a Syriac root for the Arab lexeme in question by deleting the transmitted dots and vocalisation strokes and guessing a substitute that could be mirroring a Syriac word. The last step (4) in Luxenberg's method is to translate the Arabic expression into Syriac and to sound out its original Syriac meaning.

The method presupposes its very results: the facticity of a Syriac layer underlying the Arabic text. Much of his material relies on obvious circular argument. One has to keep in mind that principally Syriac, which is linguistically closely related to Arabic, will offer in innumerable cases etymological parallels for individual words or expressions of the Qur'an; particularly since religious vocabulary is abounding in Syriac These parallels in many cases are simply due to the close linguistic relation between the two Semitic languages and do not necessarily reflect a cultural contact. With Luxenberg, however, the tracing of Syriac 'origins' for Arabic words grows into an obsession. It culminates in the re-formulation of entire Qur'anic discourses such as the eschatological recompense of the rightful in Paradise which, according to Luxenberg, is devoid of erotic elements, what was taken for paradisiacal wide-eyed virgins, al-h??r al-`??n, being in fact nothing more than white raisins.

Luxenberg's approach implies that the Arabic pronunciation of many words in the Qur'an is not genuine, but has replaced a Syriac. Therefore, the evidence of Syriac/Arabic homonyms or Syriac words bearing some similarity to Qur'anic Arabic words but sounding slightly different from their Arabic counterparts points to an originally Syriac wording of the Qur'anic text that has been wrongly arabicised. These instances therefore can be used as arguments against the validity of oral tradition as such. The Arabic form in question is understood as due to a textual corruption of its Syriac original made possible by a deficient written tradition, thus allowing the conclusion that oral tradition was non-existent 'Should such an oral transmission have existed at all, it has to be considered as disrupted rather early'. Adducing a large number of cases - though, in my view, few of them seriously worth considering - Luxenberg claims that the entire scholarly edifice of Islam, largely based on the reliability of oral tradition, is unfounded. This conclusion provides him with the premise for his project of a totally new interpretation of the Qur'an.

Syriac/Arabic parallels, in Luxenberg's view - one has to note - indicate Syriac origin not only linguistically but theologically as well. Thus, the Syriac word qery??n?? which matches the Arabic qur'an meaning 'recitation', 'lectionary', in Luxenberg's imagination is not only a linguistic loan, but the very proof of Syriac cultural origin not only did the Syriac word qery??n?? become the Arabic word qur'an, but a real Syriac lectionary became, via translation into Arabic, the Arabic Islamic scripture. A linguistic observation is thus pressed to support a theological hypothesis. By re-interpreting the entire semantic field of reading, reciting, inspiring, '?? la Syriaque', Luxenberg shifts the understanding of the Islamic scripture from the communication of a divine message to a work of translation or exegetical teaching, probably achieved by Syriac religious scholars. The general thesis underlying his entire book thus is that the Qur'an is a corpus of translations and paraphrases of original Syriac texts recited in church services as elements of a lectionary.

It is striking that the alleged extent of hybridity in Qur'anic language as such does not interest Luxenberg seriously - he nowhere reflects about the actual use of that language, as limited to cultic purposes or as vernacular - hybridity merely serves as a means to de-construct the Qur'an as genuine scripture, or, phenomenologically speaking, to de-construct Islamic scripture as the transmitter's faithful rendering of what he felt to have received from a supernatural source. The Qur'an thus is presented as the translation of a Syriac text. This is an extremely pretentious hypothesis which is unfortunately relying on rather modest foundations. Luxenberg does not consider previous work in the diverse disciplines of Qur'anic studies - neither concerning the pagan heritage, nor the poetical Arabian background, nor the Jewish contacts. He takes interest neither in religio-historical nor in literary approaches to the Qur'an although his assumptions touch substantially on all these discourses. Luxenberg limits himself to a very mechanistic, positivist linguistic method without caring for theoretical considerations developed in modem linguistics. Luxenberg has the merit to have raised anew the old question of the Syriac stratum of Qur'anic textual history that had - since Mingana - been marginalised. But the task of a profound and reliable study of the Syriac elements of the Qur'an is still waiting to be fulfilled. Review Of Die syro-aram??ische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschl??sselung der Koransprache ('Christoph Luxenberg', 2000, Das Arabische Buch: Berlin) By Fran??ois de Blois)"

Stop crying. There's more.

"The title of this book announces a new 'reading' of the Qur'an and the subtitle promises 'a contribution to the decoding of the language of the Qur'an.' The author's theses are summarised succinctly in his 'resum??' (pp. 299-307): the Qur'an is not written in Arabic but in an 'Aramaic-Arabic mixed language' which was spoken in Mecca at the time of Muharnmad. Mecca was 'originally an Aramaic settlement'. This is 'confirmed' by the fact that the name makkah is really Aramaic m??kkQ??, 'low'. This mixed language was recorded, from the beginning, in a defective script, i.e., without vowel signs or the diacritic points which later distinguish b, t, n, y, etc. The author denies the existence of a parallel oral tradition of Qur' an recitation. Classical Arabic comes from somewhere else (but we are not told where). The Arabs could not understand the Qur'an, known to them as it was only from defectively written manuscripts, and reinterpreted these documents in the light nf their own language. The proposed 'Aramaic reading' of the Qur'an allows us to rediscover its original meaning.

It might be useful to distinguish straight away what is new and what is not new in these theses. Muslim scholars of the classical period debated already the question of whether or not there is 'non-Arabic' (Aramaic, Persian, etc.) linguistic material in the Qur.an, whereby at least the more broad-minded authorities were content that there was; since God created all languages there is no reason why He should not have used words from different languages in His revelation. Modern linguistic scholarship established, certainly by the middle of the 19th century, that the Arabic language, both in the Qur'an and in other texts, contains a significant number of loan-words from several dialects of Aramaic (Syriac, Babylonian Aramaic, etc). Aramaic was the principal cultural language of the area between the Sinai and the Tigris for more than a millennium and it exercised a considerable influence on all the languages of the region, including the Hebrew of the later portions of the Old Testament. The Arabs participated in the civilisation of the ancient Near East, many of them were Christians or Jews, so there is nothing surprising about the fact that they borrowed heavily from Aramaic. But this does not make Arabic a 'mixed language'. What is new in Luxenberg's thesis is the ciaim that large portions of the Qur'an are not grammatically correct Arabic, but need to be read as Aramaic, inflectional endings and all. The Qur'an is thus not (grammatically) Arabic with Aramaic loan-words, but is composed in a jargon that mixes structural elements of two different languages. We shall examine the plausibility of this thesis in due course.

The second principal component of the author's argumentation is that, since the later Muslims were unable to understand the Aramaic-Arabic jargon of their sacred book, they were forced arbitrarily to add diacritic signs to the text so as to make it into halfway comprehensible (classical) Arabic, thereby inventing a supposed oral tradition to justify this new reading. To rediscover the 'original' meaning we need to disregard the diacritical signs in the traditional text and find some other reading. This line of argument is also not new. It has been pursued in recent years in a series of articles by the North American Arabist J. A. Bellamy as well as in a (particularly bad) book by the German theologian G??nter L??ling; strangely, none of these are mentioned in Luxenberg's bibliography. This too will be discussed in the course of the present review. In any case, a book that announces already in the preface (p. ix) that its author has chosen not to discuss 'the whole [sic!] of the relevant literature' because this literature' makes hardly any contribution to the new method put forward here' is one that poses, from the outset, questions about its own scholarly integrity.

But let us look at a few examples of the author's 'new method'. Because of the technical linguistic nature of this discussion I will use a consistent Semitist system of transliteration (in bold) and transcription (in italics) for both Syriac and Arabic, a system differing both from the one used by the author of the book under review and from that otherwise followed by this journal.

One of the main planks of Luxenberg's theory of the 'Aramaic-Arabic mixed language' is the contention that in a number of Qur'anic passages the final aleph of an Arabic word stands not for the Arabic accusative ending -an, but for the Aramaic ending of the determinate state ( -?? in the singular or -?? in the plural). On p. 30 the author discusses Q. 11:24 and Q. 39:29, where the 'current Qur'an' ('der heutige Koran') has hal yastawiy??ni maQalan, 'are the two similar as an example?', the last word being an accusative of specification (tamy??z). The author thinks that the meaning is improved if is taken to be a 'transcription' of the Syriac plural mtl' (maQl??) and that the sentence consequently means 'Are the examples [plural!] similar [dual!]?'. Translated into modern Arabic' ('ins heutige Arabisch ??bertragen'), the Qur'anic sentence would then (supposedly) be hal yastawiy??ni l-maQal??ni. Most first-year students of Arabic are sure to know that this is neither classical nor modern Arabic, but simply wrong. But even without this lapsus, it can hardly be claimed that the 'Syro-Aramaic reading' offers any improvement in the understanding of the Qur'anic passages.

On p. 37 the author discusses Q. 61:61 innan?? had??n?? rabb?? 'il?? sir??tin mustaq??min d??nan qiyaman, which, if d??nan qiyaman is in fact an accusative of specification, would need to be translated by something like 'verily, my Lord has directed me to a straight path in accordance with a firm religion', or, if we assume a mixed construction (had?? construed first with the preposition 'il?? and then with double accusative), it could mean '..... to a straight path, a firm religion'. Our author's proposal is that the syntactical difficulty of the latter rendering could be alleviated by taking not as an Arabic accusative but as Syriac dyn' qym' (d??n?? kayy??m??), which he translates as 'a firm belief' ('feststehender, best??ndiger Glaube'). But in so doing the author overlooks the fact that, unlike Arabic d??nun, Aramaic d??n?? does not actually mean 'belief, religion', but only 'judgement, sentence'. Arabic d??n, in the meaning 'religion', is not borrowed from Aramaic but from Middle Persian d??n (Avestan da??n??-).

On pp. 39ff. the author connects the problematic Qur' anic term han??fun with Aramaic hanp??, 'pagan', and specifically with the Pauline doctrine of Abraham as the paradigm of salvation for the gentiles. I have recently argued along similar lines in a lecture delivered in the summer of the year 2000 and eventually published in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65 (2002), pp. 16-25, but differently from 'Luxenberg' I did not fail to mention that the same suggestion had been made long ago both by Margoliouth and by Ahrens, nor did I commit the absurdity of claiming (as our author does on p. 39) that Arabic is a 'Wiedergabe' of Syriac hnp', despite the fact that the Arabic form has an -i-, of which there is no trace in Syriac.

But in the eyes of our author, the Aramaic suffixes -?? and -?? are 'represented' in the Qur'an not only by alif, but also by ha'. Thus [p. 34] Arabic (xal??fatun) is 'the phonetic transcription' of Syriac hlyp' (hl??f??). Unfortunately, no reasonis given for why, in this 'phonetic transcription', the Aramaic laryngeal h is not 'transcribed' by the phonetically identical Arabic laryngeal h, but by x.

On p. 35 the author discusses the Qur'anic word for 'angels' (plural), for which the traditional reading is mal??'ikatun. The author thinks that this is really the Syriac word for 'angels', which he spells, in Syriac script, (correctly) as ml'k', and which he transcribes (wrongly) as mal??k??; in fact, the correct Syriac vocalisation is malax?? (the first aleph being left over from the older form *mal'ax- ) In any case, neither the Syriac spelling, nor the correct vocalisation, nor even the author's erroneous vocalisation explains the -y- of the Arabic plural. The author then goes on to claim that the postulated 'Syro-Aramaic pronunciation' of the Qur'anic plural is made certain ('gesichert') by the 'modern Arabic of the Near East mal??yk??. This is a big jumble. In fact, the Arabic singular mal'akun or malakun is in all likelihood borrowed from Aramaic mal'ax- or malax-, but the plural mal??'ikatun is a perfectly regular Arabic formation, and is represented graphically by , with the usual Qur'anic defective spelling of internal -a-. The cited 'modern Arabic' (more correctly Levantine) form is the expected dialectal reflex of the classical pausal form mal??'ika(h), with palatalisation ( 'imalah) of the final -a to -e (I see little justification for the transcription with long -e), and has nothing to do with the Syriac plural malax??.

But once the 'mixed-language' status of the Qur'an has been postulated, the author evidently thinks it possible to take any Arabic word that vaguely resembles something in Syriac and to determine its meaning not from the Arabic but from the Syriac lexicon. Thus on pp. 196ff. the very ordinary Arabic verb daraba, 'to beat', is quite arbitrarily said to derive from the Syriac verb traf, which, among other things, means 'to beat, to move, to shake (wings), etc.' Brockelmann, Lexicon Syriacum, p. 290, compares the Arabic verb tarafa, 'to repel'. It seems unlikely that the Aramaic root should also have anything to do with Arabic daraba; the correspondences d/t and b/p(f) are certainly not the norm in Semitic cognates and would be perhaps even more surprising in the case of a loan-word. But this difficulty does not stop the author from assigning the meanings of the Syriac word to the various occurrence of daraba in the Qur'an.

Then, on p. 283 the author claims that the Arabic verb taga, 'to rebel, tyrannise, etc.' has, apart from the secondary , nothing Arabic about it', but is a 'borrowing' from Syriac t`a. He then picks out of a Syriac dictionary the meaning 'to forget' and assigns this to the Qur'anic instances of taga. But the fact that the Arabic root has gayn where the Aramaic has `ayin shows very clearly that the Arabic word is not borrowed from Aramaic, but that they are good Semitic cognates. Anyway, the usual meaning of Syriac t`a is 'to err, to be led into error, etc.', although it can also mean 'to forget'. So even if the Arabic verb were a borrowing from Syriac there would still be nothing compelling about the new meaning assigned to it by our author.

I shall quote one last example of the author's 'Syro-Aramaic reading' of the Qur'anic text. In Q. 96:19 the last word of the sura is (i)qtarib, which has until now always heen understand to mean 'draw near' (imperative). But our author [p. 296] thinks it means 'take part in the eucharist' ('nimm an der Abendmahlliturgie teil'), since iqtaraba is 'without doubt borrowed' ('ohne Zweifel .... entlehnt') from the Syriac verb eQkarrab, which besides meaning 'to draw near', also means more specifically 'to (draw near to the altar to) receive the eucharist'. In support of this he quotes (on p. 298, in the wake of some editorial mishap twice) a passage from the Kitabu 1-'agani) in which the Arabic verb taqarraba is used unambiguously to mean 'receive the (Christian) eucharist'. But this alleged confirmation scuppers the author's argument. The (actually well-known) Christian Arabic technical term taqarraba is indeed a calque on Syriac eQkarrab, with the same stem formation, i.e., D-stem with prefix t(a)-. There is no good reason to assume that the same Syriac verb was 'borrowed' a second time as the (differently formed) stem iqtaraba.

The examples that I have quoted could be expanded manyfold, but they are perhaps enough. They illustrate what is actually the less controversial, or in any case less fantastical part of the author's line of argument, the part, namely, in which he applies his 'Syro-Aramaic reading' to the actual traditional text of the Qur'an. But this book goes a lot further. Having established (as he thinks) that the Qur'an is composed in an Aramaic-Arabic 'mixed language' the author proceeds to juggle the diacritic points of the traditional text to create an entirely new Qur' an which he then attempts to decipher with the help of his (as we have observed, often very shaky) knowledge of Syriac. I do not really think that there is very much point in discussing this aspect of the book. There is no doubt that, without the diacritical points, the Qur'an is indeed an extremely obscure work and that the possibility of repointing affords virtually limitless opportunities to reinterpret the scripture, in Arabic or in any other language that one chooses. I think, however, that any reader who wants to take the trouble to plough through Luxenberg's 'new reading' of any of the numerous passages discussed in this book will concede that the 'new reading' does not actually make better sense than a straight classical Arabic reading of the traditional text. It is a reading that is potentially attractive only in its novelty, or shall I say its perversity, not in that it sheds any light on the meaning of the book or on the history of Islam.

It is necessary, in conclusion to say a little about the authorship, or rather the non-authorship, the pseudonymity of this book. An article published in the New York Times on 2nd March 2002 (and subsequently broadly disseminated in the internet) referred to this book as the work of 'Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany'. It is, I think, sufficiently clear from this review that the person in question is not 'a scholar of ancient Semitic languages'. He is someone who evidently speaks some Arabic dialect, has a passable, but not flawless command of classical Arabic, knows enough Syriac so as to be able to consult a dictionary, but is innocent of any real understanding of the methodology of comparative Semitic linguistics. His book is not a work of scholarship but of dilettantism....(Review Of Die syro-aram??ische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschl??sselung der Koransprache ('Christoph Luxenberg', 2000, Das Arabische Buch: Berlin) By Fran??ois de Blois)"

Oooo, we have a winner <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->
Paul Younan Wrote:Akhi bar-Khela,

As you well know, Abraham was from southern "Iraq." When told to leave southern "Iraq", he and his wife Sarai lived in Harran (in northern "Iraq", then called "Assyria"). They lived there a long, long time with their relatives. From there they went on to Canaan.

As you also know, Abraham had Ishmael and then Iskhaaq. When Iskhaaq was 40 years old, Abraham forbade him to marry from the women around them and sent him to his own "kin" so that he may marry "one of his own."

The book of Genesis tells us:

Moses Wrote:Isaac was 40 years old when he took as his wife Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram, and sister of Laban the Aramean.

The story doesn't end there, beloved Akha. Iskhaaq later had Yaqub, did he not? Well, did Iskhaaq also insist that his son, like he, marry from their own "kin?" Why, yes indeedee....he sure did. And sure enough, Yaqub married the daughters of Laban....the Aramean, who told him:

Genesis 29:15 Wrote:Laban said to him, "Just because you're my relative, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be."

Now, let's analyze these facts for a little bit. Iskhaaq married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean. She was the sister of Laban, the Aramean. They were from Paddan-Aram (Aramea.)

Iskhaaq's son Yaqub was also forbidden to marry of the "foreign" women, and also went to Aram to select a wife from among his "kin"....the Arameans.

So, all the men and women who are considered to be the Patriarchs of both the Hebrews and the Arabs were.....guess what? ARAMEANS! Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, Abraham, Sarai, Iskhaaq, Laban, Zilpah, Bilhah....these were all Arameans, Akhi.

Only Ishmael was half-Aramean (his father.) His mother was an Egyptian. So the Arabs are not purely Semitic, but half-Semitic and half-Hamitic.

If these were Abraham's "kin", Arameans who lived in Iraq (southern "Babylonia~UR" and northern "Assyria-Harran") that is, then are you really suggesting that the Arameans (and even Babylonians and Assyrians) spoke Arabic prior to the time Ishmael and the Arabs even existed?
Paul Younan Wrote:Akhi bar-Khela,

As you well know, Abraham was from southern "Iraq." When told to leave southern "Iraq", he and his wife Sarai lived in Harran (in northern "Iraq", then called "Assyria"). They lived there a long, long time with their relatives. From there they went on to Canaan.

As you also know, Abraham had Ishmael and then Iskhaaq. When Iskhaaq was 40 years old, Abraham forbade him to marry from the women around them and sent him to his own "kin" so that he may marry "one of his own."

The book of Genesis tells us:

Moses Wrote:Isaac was 40 years old when he took as his wife Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram, and sister of Laban the Aramean.

The story doesn't end there, beloved Akha. Iskhaaq later had Yaqub, did he not? Well, did Iskhaaq also insist that his son, like he, marry from their own "kin?" Why, yes indeedee....he sure did. And sure enough, Yaqub married the daughters of Laban....the Aramean, who told him:

Genesis 29:15 Wrote:Laban said to him, "Just because you're my relative, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be."

Now, let's analyze these facts for a little bit. Iskhaaq married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean. She was the sister of Laban, the Aramean. They were from Paddan-Aram (Aramea.)

Iskhaaq's son Yaqub was also forbidden to marry of the "foreign" women, and also went to Aram to select a wife from among his "kin"....the Arameans.

So, all the men and women who are considered to be the Patriarchs of both the Hebrews and the Arabs were.....guess what? ARAMEANS!

If these were Abraham's "kin", Arameans who lived in Iraq (southern "Babylonia~UR" and northern "Assyria-Harran") that is, then are you really suggesting that the Arameans (and even Babylonians and Assyrians) spoke Arabic prior to the time Ishmael and the Arabs even existed?

These are facts. I do accept, Akhi Paul. I also accept that Aramaic was the tongue of both Ishmael and Issac as it was the principal tongue of Abraham. However, I believe Arabic grew up to become a rich, intensely poetic language, surpassing Aramaic and Hebrew in literary expression while retaining what Hebrew threw away and Aramaic had forgotten.
Akhi bar-Khela,

Why would I be upset about this? I agree with the author 100%, especially when he wrote:

Quote:Muslim scholars of the classical period debated already the question of whether or not there is 'non-Arabic' (Aramaic, Persian, etc.) linguistic material in the Qur.an, whereby at least the more broad-minded authorities were content that there was.

The bottom line is that even classical Muslim scholars admitted there was borrowing of Aramaic-Syriac within the Quran, just like there was borrowing of Aramaic-Syriac within the Greek NT and borrowing of Akkadian-Aramaic within the Hebrew OT.

The idea that Arabic is somehow "superior" or "older" than either Aramaic or Akkadian, both languages from which it not only derives but its alphabet and script is heavily based upon, is absurd.

The early Patriarchs were Arameans....and the Arameans never spoke Arabic. Arabic did not exist before the Arabs. Hebrew did not exist before the Hebrews.

It's just scientific, archaeological fact and common sense.
Heheheh.

Akhi bar-Khela, while the Arabs who were descendant from Ishmael were eating lizards in the desert of Arabia....their Semitic ancestors of Mesopotamia and the Levant were building half of the world's civilization as we know it today. While these civilizations were creating complex literature, science and advanced mathematics including geometry and calculus.....lizard-eating Arabs were still counting on their fingers.....when their hands were free from picking lice off each other's backs.


C'mon, my beloved friend of many years! Must we resort to abusive ad hominems?
bar_khela Wrote:These are facts. I do accept, Akhi Paul. I also accept that Aramaic was the tongue of both Ishmael and Issac as it was the principal tongue of Abraham.

Then by admission Arabic and Hebrew are really Aramaic-based, like English and Spanish are really Latin-based.

bar_khela Wrote:However, I believe Arabic grew up to become a rich, intensely poetic language,

Very beautiful. If you ever read Kahlil Gibrans (an Assyrian) works in their original Arabic, it would bring a tear to your eyes.

But English is beautiful, too. And so is Chinese.

bar_khela Wrote:surpassing Aramaic and Hebrew in literary expression

Well, that's going a bit too far. Imitation is flattering, but those borrowing A-rabs didn't create anything that wasn't already in existence for thousands of years before they even existed.

And no, they did not "invent" zero, either.

bar_khela Wrote:while retaining what Hebrew threw away

Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language for 2,000 years. It has only recently been "resurrected." That the meaning of idioms and certain terms was "forgotten" can hardly be blamed on the Jews, who lived away from their homeland for 2,000 years in Europe.

Give Assyrians another couple of generations there in Los Angeles. They will forget Aramaic, too.

bar_khela Wrote:and Aramaic had forgotten.


Aramaic, unlike Hebrew, was never forgotten, and it still spoken as it has been for the last 4,000 years (at least).

It contains things Arabic couldn't even express....trust me. My parents spoke both fluently. How much longer Aramaic is not "forgotten" is another question....it may very well end up like Biblical Hebrew, and even Akkadian, but we fight on to ensure that never happens.....
bar_khela Wrote:Heheheh.

Akhi bar-Khela, while the Arabs who were descendant from Ishmael were eating lizards in the desert of Arabia....their Semitic ancestors of Mesopotamia and the Levant were building half of the world's civilization as we know it today. While these civilizations were creating complex literature, science and advanced mathematics including geometry and calculus.....lizard-eating Arabs were still counting on their fingers.....when their hands were free from picking lice off each other's backs.


C'mon, my beloved friend of many years! Must we resort to abusive ad hominems?

Nothing wrong with chasing lizards in the desert, Akhi. The point is that they were too busy looking for the next watering hole to contribute anything to civilization until well after it had already been firmly established.

Don't pull this "Arabic" supremacy stuff on me.... <!-- sBig Grin --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/happy.gif" alt="Big Grin" title="Happy" /><!-- sBig Grin --> Everyone who is from the area, except the Arabs, knows they were a bunch of highway brigands before they were civilized by the contacts with others.

Arabic has got nothing on Hebrew, let alone Aramaic....both of which were already highly developed by the time the Arabs became literate.

It's just the truth.
Paul Younan Wrote:Akhi bar-Khela,

Why would I be upset about this? I agree with the author 100%, especially when he wrote:

Quote:Muslim scholars of the classical period debated already the question of whether or not there is 'non-Arabic' (Aramaic, Persian, etc.) linguistic material in the Qur.an, whereby at least the more broad-minded authorities were content that there was.

The bottom line is that even classical Muslim scholars admitted there was borrowing of Aramaic-Syriac within the Quran, just like there was borrowing of Aramaic-Syriac within the Greek NT and borrowing of Akkadian-Aramaic within the Hebrew OT.

The idea that Arabic is somehow "superior" or "older" than either Aramaic or Akkadian, both languages from which it not only derives but its alphabet and script is heavily based upon, is absurd.

The early Patriarchs were Arameans....and the Arameans never spoke Arabic. Arabic did not exist before the Arabs. Hebrew did not exist before the Hebrews.

It's just scientific, archaeological fact and common sense.

It's on, Akhi.

War.
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